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EPA Threatens Wyoming Man for Building a Pond on His Property

The Administrator of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, is testing the power of the EPA in advance of the passage of harsh new rules that will give the EPA control of all the bodies of water in the country. The EPA sees themselves as the overseers of all water on all property in the United States, public or private, whether it be lakes, streams or even ditches.

No landowner’s property will be safe from these people. A test case is that of Andy Johnson who faces fines and criminal penalties for building a pond on his property.

Andy and Katie Johnson built a stock pond on their 8-acre Wyoming farm. They filled it with clear water, fish, ducks and geese. His horses used it to drink and graze.

Johnson family

All went well until the EPA went after the family for violating the Clean Water Act and threatened Andy Johnson with civil and criminal penalties including fines of $75,000 a day.

Andy Johnson has vowed to go bankrupt before he pays the government a dime. He wants to teach his children to not back down.

The EPA claims the Johnsons built a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. The EPA charges the pond discharges into other waterways. Johnson says it’s a pond to attract wildlife which is exempt from Clean Water regulations.

Johnson says a letter from the Wyoming State Engineeer’s Office proves he followed state rules.

The EPA claims they have the final say and they won’t back down.

Johnson felt hopeless when he received the EPA order, but he now has three Republican lawmakers helping him. Wyoming Senators John Barrasso, Mike Enzi, and Louisiana Sen. David Vitter are supporting him. They sent a March 12th letter to the EPA’s acting Assistant Administrator demanding the EPA withdraw the compliance order which “reads like a draconian edict of a heavy-handed bureaucracy”.

Johnson has 60 days to hire a consultant to assess the impact and to schedule restoration work on his own property.

He didn’t build a dam, he built a stock pond but that’s irrelevant to the EPA.

We are getting a taste of what the EPA plans to do to landowners in this country.

Proposed EPA rule changes will redefine what bodies of water the government agency can oversee under the Clean Water Act, changes which would give them a say over ponds, lakes, wetlands, streams, whether they are natural or man-made, no matter if it’s on public or private property.

The EPA expects to control all the water and land in this country.

When this issue was brought to the attention of the public, it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. It’s not.

The EPA is redefining the meaning of the word ‘water’ so they can seize control over all water and, as a consequence, all private property in the United States.

The Supreme Court of the United States has defined the meaning of ‘water’ as ‘navigable water.’ The EPA seeks to redefine the meaning of water as all ‘connected water,’ and they are seeking to define ‘connected water as all water, so they can assume power to regulate every body of water in the United States. Any water, even ditches, on private property will be controlled.

The EPA is using a bogus study which says all water is connected to one another deep under the earth. It would mean even puddles, ponds, and ditches along with streams and rivers fall under their jurisdiction. EPA’s Gina McCarthy is an extremist and she is running this show.

This has been in the works since Mr. Obama entered office and it took place to a lesser degree under Bill Clinton.

The EPA is run by extremists in the environmental justice movement. Some states have been fighting back. Read about that side story on this link.

The EPA attempted to seize control over large bodies of water in Virginia recently. It was stopped, but without Ken Cuccinelli to fight it, and with the opportunists and far-leftists now in charge, they might now succeed. Read more on this link.

The Environmental Protection Agency has long embodied the worst regulatory extremism found in the federal bureaucracy.

Listen to Judge Napolitano explain:

Gina McCarthy explains here that she will use her pen and phone, she doesn’t need to wait for the proposed rules to go through: